Michigan weighs conflicting messages on PFAS policy

Updated Dec 17, 2018; Posted Dec 17, 2018

Light grazes the top of the water at Clark's Marsh in the Huron National Forest, south of the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base on June, 6, 2018 in Oscoda Township. The wetland area is contaminated with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), which were once used in fire-fighting foam at the base, which closed in 1993. Dozens of township residents have been advised not to drink their well water by state and local health officials. Jake May | MLive.com

Michigan legislators will consider revisions to a bill on Tuesday that will allow higher safety standards for PFAS on the same morning when a panel of scientists will reveal recommendations for managing state contamination from the same toxic chemical family.

Senate Bill 1244 is scheduled to be heard in the House Competitiveness Committee at 8:30 a.m. December 18, even as legislators continue to revise the plan that experts say could increase the amount of the toxic per- and poly-fluorinated chemicals to which residents could be exposed.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jim Stamas, R-Midland, passed the Michigan Senate on Dec. 4 in a wave of continuing “lame duck” legislation as the Republican administration leaves office. Among other things, the bill would require cleanup criteria to be based on an outdated database of toxicity criteria, and some say it would lock in existing cleanup criteria even as understanding of the chemicals and their dangers to public health continue to evolve.

The Michigan Chamber of Commerce is pushing the legislation, saying that it updates pollution cleanup rules and will spur redevelopment at contaminated sites.

“Basically, this provision would tie Michigan’s hands and force DEQ to use old science when determining whether or not a standard was protective of human health," said James Clift, policy director at the Michigan Environmental Council, in early December after the bill was introduced November 29.

Yet as PFAS activists in Michigan call on elected officials to vote against the bill, there is some irony to the timing: The state also plans its roll-out of a months-long effort to delineate its approach to the chemicals that have been found in the drinking water of at least 2 million people in the state.

The Michigan PFAS Action and Response Team’s science advisory panel on Tuesday morning will brief the media on its report, “Scientific Evidence and Recommendations for Managing PFAS Contamination in Michigan.”

Dr. David Savitz, professor of epidemiology at Brown University and MPART’s chief scientific consultant, chaired the 6-scientist panel announced in March as Gov. Rick Snyder announced multiple initiatives across the state to outline and control the PFAS found in public water supplies, surface water, waste streams and other areas.

The point of the panel’s work, according to a news release: “(T)o provide the state with a better understanding of the available toxicological and environmental health science on PFAS and provide evidence-based recommendations that can guide Michigan’s ongoing response to this emerging class of contaminants.”

“I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but the first major announcement of the findings coming from MPART will be at the same time this bill will be heard,” said AJ Birbeck, a Grand Rapids-area attorney.

Dr. Jennifer Field, Environmental and Molecular Ecology, Oregon State University. Field’s work on PFAS goes back 20 years. She’s been part of a team looking at the chemicals at the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda, where the contamination continues to spread from the closed base into nearby waterways, including Lake Huron.

The panelists , according to the state, were assigned to “objectively assess the scientific information surrounding the issue of health advisory levels, health outcomes, remediation and mitigation, and environmental pathways.”

The research was to extend to the entire PFAS family, which includes thousands of compounds. Two of them - PFOS and PFOA - are the two with cleanup and drinking water standards in Michigan. Nationally, the Environmental Protection Agency set a lifetime health advisory for the two compounds of 70 parts per trillion (ppt), but states continue to look to the EPA for enforceable standards as some set their own guidelines.

Michigan now has a groundwater cleanup standard when combined PFOS and PFOA reach 70-ppt, a number that SB 1244′s critics say will become locked in if the legislation passes. That’s a concern among people waiting for the EPA to release its PFAS action plan, promised by the end of the year. So far, federal officials already this fall said they’re considering new toxicity statements for two additional PFAS chemicals: PFBS and GenX, a replacement chemical for PFOA.

“We’ve heard repeatedly that we need to see what the science says,” said Tony Spaniola, an attorney in Metro Detroit with a home in Oscoda. Instead, he notes, with SB 1244, the science will be disregarded.

“From a process standpoint,” he said, “this should have been a robust discussion with a full array of experts weighing in.”